Now the rabbi was waiting for him in the lobby of the Hilton. Through the plate-glass window of his hotel room, Epstein could see the hill of Jaffa in whose belly thousands of years lay collapsed and dreaming, returned to the womb. A sense of languor came over him, and, not being used to it, uneasy with its implications, he forced himself to stand. He swept the shekels from the night table into his pocket and took some large bills from the safe in the closet, tucking them into his wallet. Whether strolling the green lawns of the Weizmann Institute and touring the house with the stern eyes of Israel’s first president following him from out of the oil portraits, or riding out to Ben-Gurion University, where he saw huge carrion birds feeding in the desert, or even sitting across the table from his cousin, Moti, the subtext of all the conversations he’d had over the last days was money. Epstein had had enough. He would make a small gift to Klausner’s kabbalah operation and be done with it. He wished to talk to the rabbi of other things.
Rounding the corner of the bank of elevators in the lobby, he spotted Klausner from behind. He was wearing the same grubby suit as before; Epstein recognized a loose thread still dangling from the hem of the jacket, which the rabbi had not yet bothered to cut, and the back was marked by what looked like a dusty footprint. A navy wool scarf hung around his neck. Klausner sprang to life when he spotted Epstein, grasping his shoulders and squeezing them warmly. He lacked the physical awkwardness of the Orthodox, who often seemed to want to get as far away from their bodies as possible, and contracted themselves to a point inside their craniums. Epstein wondered if Klausner had not been born into religion but rather had come to it later. Whether beneath the ill-fitting suit there was a body that had once played basketball, wrestled, rolled naked with a girl in the grass, a body that had been granted sway in its near constant pursuit of freedom and pleasure. Imagining this commonality, Epstein felt the warmth of friendship tingle in his chest.
He followed the rabbi through the revolving door and across the drive to where a beat-up car stood at an angle to the curb, looking more abandoned than willfully parked. Klausner opened the passenger door and rifled around, removing empty plastic bottles and some cardboard tied with twine, which he tossed into the trunk. Observing from behind, Epstein asked whether Klausner also ran a recycling facility. “In a manner of speaking,” the rabbi replied with a grin, and slung himself in behind the steering wheel. Even with the seat far back, his knees were still bent at an unnatural angle.
Epstein arranged himself in the passenger seat. From the dashboard, disconnected wires bristled angrily where the stereo had been wrenched out. The engine came to life with a kick, and the rabbi swerved past a parked Mercedes and down the hotel’s steep driveway. “Sorry about this. The Bentley is in the shop,” said Klausner, swatting the lever for the turn signal and peering at Epstein out of the corner of his eye to see how the joke went over. But Epstein, who had once owned a Bentley, only smiled mildly.
Two hours later, after they’d left the coastal road and climbed in elevation, a thin rain began to fall. The car had no windshield wipers—whoever had stripped it of the stereo had perhaps seen value there, too. But Klausner, whom Epstein by now understood to be indefatigable, expertly reached outside with a dirty rag and rubbed the glass clear without so much as slowing down. This was repeated every few minutes without a break in his exegesis on the life and teachings of Luria. He would take Epstein to the house in Safed where Luria had lived, Klausner promised, to the courtyard where his students had once gathered to follow their teacher into the fields, dancing and singing psalms to welcome in the Shabbat queen.
Looking out the window, Epstein smiled to himself. He would go along with it. He would not interfere. He was someplace he couldn’t have predicted he’d be only a week earlier—in a car with a mystical rabbi on the way to Safed. The thought that he’d arrived here without having given any instructions pleased him. He had spent his whole life laboring to determine the outcome. But the eve of the sixth day had come for him, too, hadn’t it? The ancient land spilled out all around. Every life is strange, he thought. When he rolled down his window, the air smelled of pine. His mind felt light. The sun was already low. They had been delayed by traffic on the highway, and the Shabbat queen was breathing down their necks. But Epstein, looking out at the slumbering hills, was struck by the feeling of having all the time in the world.
They entered Safed and drove through the narrow streets, where the stores were already shuttered. Twice they had to stop and reverse to let tour buses pass, their high windows filled with the weary but satisfied faces of those who have just drunk from the world’s authenticity. Beyond the town center, the tourists and artists thinned out, and then they met only Hasids on the road, who flattened themselves against the stone houses as the car squeezed past, clutching their plastic bags to their bodies. What was it with religious Jews and their plastic bags? Epstein wondered. Why did these people who had been wandering for thousands of years not invest in more reliable luggage? They didn’t even believe in briefcases and came to court with their legal documents in bags from the kosher bakery—he’d seen it a hundred times. Now they shook their hands in annoyance at Klausner, not for nearly cutting off their noses as he passed but for driving so close to the arrival of Shabbat. But four minutes before the closing bell, the rabbi made a sharp turn into a driveway on the edge of town and rolled to a stop in front of a building whose mottled stones were the color of teeth, though perhaps of a person too ancient to use them.
Klausner hopped out, singing to himself in a rich tenor. Epstein stood in the fresh, cool air and saw down through the valley where Jesus had performed his miracles. A rooster crowed in the distance, and as if in answer there came the distant reply of a dog. Had it not been for the satellite dish planted on the terra-cotta roof, it might have been possible to believe that the rabbi had brought him back to a time when the world was not yet consequence.
“Welcome to Gilgul,” Klausner called, already hurrying up the path. “Come in, they’ll be waiting for us.”
Epstein remained where he was, taking in the view.
But now his phone was going off again, the ring so loud it might have been heard all the way down in Nazareth. It was his assistant calling from New York. Good news, she said: she thought she might have a lead on his coat.
Packing for Canaan